My Perestroika - A Documentary Film by Robin Hessman

DVD Purchase

Home Video DVD

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DVD for Educational and Institutional Use

We are distributing My Perestroika via NEW DAY FILMS (the only distribution company owned and run by independent filmmakers themselves.)

If you are interested in screening My Perestroika at a conference, annual meeting, or if you’d like to invite filmmaker Robin Hessman to your campus to speak about the film, please contact us at info@myperestroika.com.

To order a DVD for your institution or library:
Visit New Day Films, or call New Day Films toll free at 1 (888) 367-9154.

If you are an educator who would like to use My Perestroika in the classroom, or want to have a screening at your institution, please rent or acquire the DVD from New Day Films. The Home DVD is not licensed for this use and is intended for individual and family use only.

Here’s what some professors have said about My Perestroika:

“My Perestroika offers intriguing insights into the late years of the Soviet Union, the challenges of post-Soviet social and economic flux, and the unique nature of contemporary Russian life. It is at once both an intimate drama and an historical, sociological, and anthropological study on an epic scale.

—Jennifer Siegel, Associate Professor of History, The Ohio State University

“This is a beautiful film, visually and emotionally. Through the lives of five ordinary Muscovites we see one of the most dramatic events of recent history — the end of the Soviet Union. By juxtaposing materials from two epochs – the Soviet past and the post-Soviet present – the film constructs a complex and poetic narrative that avoids the usual cold war stereotypes about the Soviet “other.” Made by a director with a keen ethnographic eye, this film will be of great use to college professors.”

“My Perestroika is a terrific film for classroom use in courses on post-Soviet Russia. No other film documents so beautifully and vividly the effects of enormous social change on the lives of everyday Russians, together with amazing and instructive documentary footage. I included the film in my freshman seminar, “Russia after Communism,” along with a class visit from director Robin Hessman, and many students remarked that it was a high point in the course.”

“MY PERESTROIKA is exactly the sort of film I want to teach late-Soviet and post-Soviet history with….What a perfect text for stimulating our own conversations in the classroom.”

—Mark D. Steinberg, Professor, History Department, University of Illinois

“The intimately personal stories of five schoolmates in “My Perestroika” not only touch every student, but with the help of this artistic documentary, they also better understand the seismic changes that the fall of the Soviet Union produced in politics and economics. The film’s lyrical and at times ironic tone elucidates the many post-Soviet contradictions that reverberate in everyday practices and high-stakes politics.”

—Katalin Fabian, Department of Government and Law, Lafayette College

“My Perestroika brings us the understanding of how the events of the Perestroika era have led to the current political apathy of many Russians – something that historians and political scientists in the west have been trying to understand. The film is an invaluable resource to anybody who studies the language, culture, history or politics of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.”

—Irina Dubinina, Director of the Russian Language Program, Brandeis University

“What does it mean to grow up in one world and—all the while remaining in the very same apartment—find yourself living in a wholly other world in which all the rules have changed? My Perestroika is a very human portrayal of an epic transition with no attempt at melodrama. This is a film that will be appreciated alike by scholars and students who are just learning names like “Lenin,” “Stalin,” and “Gorbachev.”
—Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History, Yale UniversityMarci Shore, Associate Professor of History, Yale University